Irrelevance Glorified

Gee, now I’ll have to stop talking about how the refs are always trying to screw Illinois.

Update : My Sad Sad Saga
The video above was from the game last week, when Illinois pulled off the shocker and beat Ohio State. It was broadcast on ABC (regional, maybe?), but amazingly enough, I didn’t watch it. I had a Halo 3 appointment with some friends. But, that’s not to say I wasn’t prepared. I had just bought an HDTV tuner which could catch over-the-air (OTA) HD signals. I checked out my antenna conditions and hooked it up. Somewhat disappointingly, I only received three OTA HD signals. But one of them was ABC! I was in business. Friday night I tested out the system, scheduling taping from 9 pm to 1 am….and it was a success! It was like 25 GB, but whatever, I have space.

The next morning, I schedule it to record from 2:30 to 7 pm, and make sure there is 30+ GB of space on my hard drive. We go to kick some Covenant ass. During the game, I could feel my phone vibrate — I was getting text messages. I knew something was up; either we were winning, or we were getting really screwed. But I squelched the temptation to check my phone and soldiered on. After we were Haloed out, we headed back home.

But Cameron and Gina were hungry, so we stopped at the Korean Karaoke place for dinner. I was going to stay in the car, to avoid hearing any information, but I was persuaded to come along when I was told the TV’s were off. Just to be safe, I put in ear plugs and kept my eyes on the floor. I hummed to myself to cover up any of the sounds that made their way through the foam. I kept up my sensory blackout until we got home, where I sprinted into my room, turned on my monitor, and….found that it had frozen. With a sinking feeling, I checked the hard drive…there was waaaay too much free space for this to be a good thing. And indeed…the computer had recorded nothing. I was crushed. I yelled a few choice swear words. And after some internal monologue, I realized that there was no way that I would be able to hold out on finding out the results until I acquired the game through other means. There was no way out. So I checked out Sportsline….and then ESPN and CNNSI! Oh my gosh! The Fighting Illini are front page news all around the country! And I had missed it!

I consoled myself with karaoke that night with other jubilant Illinois fans. I managed to catch the game the next morning at 8am on ESPN Classic (Yeah! An Instant Classic!). But really, I learned a lesson. I decided to skip the OSU game as a message, that Illinois Sports don’t control me (apparently video games do, though). And I was punished by missing a game that will forever be a part of Illini Legend. Serves me right.

This weekend we had a threat of an ice storm, and it was much talked about in the news. In end, it amounted to nothing; it was apparently too warm to ice storm, and we got mostly rain, although its cold enough to freeze now. These people had it much much worse. Anyway, this morning I had to make a trip to the Post Office to pick up a package, and to my chagrin my car was covered in ice and I couldn’t open the doors. This is the first time I’ve ever had all four doors freeze up on me. After about 5 minutes I finally got the passenger door open, and was able to open to start the car and run my errands. After arriving back home, I decided to make sure all the doors can open, while the car is warm. Back door still won’t open from the outside, so I climb into the back seat from the front, and start pushing from the inside. Nothing. I start banging on the edges of the door, trying to loosen the ice up. Nothing. I put my shoulder into it. Nothing. I’m about to start kicking…and then I notice that the back doors are locked.